In my U.S. Pat. No. 4,211,930 issued July 8, 1980 there is disclosed an electrical vehicle propulsion system utilizing individual stepping motors, each connected to a traction wheel of a motor vehicle. The stepping motors receive electric current from an alternator driven by a continuously-running Diesel or turbine internal combustion engine (shown in FIG. 1 as block #12) which utilizes liquid fuel such as gasoline or fuel oil.
Many internal combustion engines waste a considerable amount of energy through the dissipation of heat through radiators. Likewise, a considerable amount of energy is lost through the exhaust manifold of the internal combustion engine, when operated with liquid fuels.
In view of the greater and greater scarcity of such liquid fuels, there is a likelihood that such fuels will only be obtained, if at all, at prohibitively high costs. The portable electric power plant of my present invention drives the alternator of my prior system from a gas turbine receiving power gas from a portable combustion receptacle or pressure vessel in the combustion chamber of which suitably subdivided slow-burning solid fuel, such as wood, is burned to produce such power and expanded power gas.
During World War II one hundred thousand trucks were powered by solid fuel operated woodgas generators in Sweden and Germany.